ON THE OUTDOORS.

Shedd Exhibit Honors Inuit Culture

November 06, 1994|By John Husar.

My most profound hunting experience came on the Arctic ice somewhere off Baffin Island with an Inuit hunter.

We had been searching for walrus in a special part of the Northwest Passage where currents maintain open water. We found several, took photos and lucked across a band of seal hunters who gave us some frozen char. After lunch, we made our way back toward camp on snowmobile and pack sled in a fog that became so thick our guide had to read wind lines in the snow. It was 10 miles before the silhouette of our green tent appeared through the mists.

Along the way, we picked up tracks of caribou and the guide became excited. Many Inuit remain subsistence hunters, and this meant the chance for needed meat. We tracked the animals onto land until they were spotted grazing lichen from rocks ahead.

We left the sleds and crept toward the animals until we were within the range of our guide's ancient .22-caliber rifle. He tried a shot, studying a puff of snow where the bullet missed the animal, then made a correction that brought it down.

We hurried to the fallen beast. The guide slipped the smaller blade of his penknife between vertebra in the neck, instantly-and humanely-killing the animal. Then, with minimum aid from me, he had it skinned and packed into a tight block on the sled within 18 minutes. I timed the remarkable operation.

That night over a supper of boiled caribou shoulder, he explained how every bit of that animal, including the vitamin-rich stomach and intestines, would be used by his family.

"But not everyone can do this," he said. "The old days are over. Too many of our people no longer know how to hunt."

The idea that Inuit-those former Arctic nomads once called Eskimos-cannot hunt is tantamount to saying Americans have given up driving cars. The cultural change is too profound to contemplate.

"Without hunting, Inuits cannot be Inuits," our guide explained. "They no longer dwell in the ways of the people."

They can thank western man for that. The civilizations of Europe and southern North America gave the Inuit a hunting economy and then took it away, inadvertently ruining them. An ill-conceived "animal rights" movement capitalized on the unfortunate bludgeoning of baby harp seals (by white Newfoundlanders, not Inuit). It seized an emotionally ripe moment to reverse widespread use of skins and furs harvested in the Far North. The victims turned out to be mostly innocent Inuit.

Thousands and thousands in isolated hamlets were left without jobs and werewithal, riding the downward spiral of welfare. Fathers lost their stature. Social revulsion forbade them from passing on the old ways. Youths were misled by impossible standards dictated from satellite-imported American TV. Hope dwindled in the isolated communities. Alcoholism and drugs became ways of life.

"The anti-fur movement destroyed 90 percent of our economy," said John Hickes, a leader of the new Inuit nation of Nunavut. This 700,000-square-mile eastern stretch of the old Northwest Territories gains independence in 1999. Hickes' job is to recruit and train 900 of the area's 18,000 natives to run the government.

"It was just devastating," Hickes said. "It changed our lives."

Hickes was in Chicago for last week's opening of a new exhibit at Shedd Aquarium that celebrates the Inuit hunters. "On Arctic Ice: The Inuit Hunters of Canada," is the culmination of a two-year-old promise by deputy director David Lonsdale to make amends for insults hurled on the Inuit by animal rightists when the Shedd hired them to catch beluga whales for its Oceanarium. The exhibit is a bold statement by the Shedd-a sort of "in your face" response to those who oppose the use of living animals for research and educational display.

In delivering a letter of appreciation on Thursday from the president of Nunavut, Hickes said he was not surprised by the aquarium's gesture, knowing the people at the Shedd.

"They recognize that this is the real world," he said. "With them there is no fudging of reality. They know that this is the way it is, and I commend them for doing it."

The exhibit, which runs through March 31, displays sights and scenes of the Arctic along with old and new hunting tools. Placards explain the importance of hunting.

"Our fathers and grandfathers taught us to hunt, and we do it in much the same way except now we use rifles instead of harpoons," one quotes an Inuit named Peter Green from Paulatuk. "We were also taught to share what we took with relatives and friends. Your way of life, down south as white people, is a way of life I myself would not want to live. We are people who are free to go hunting every day."

Hickes said the self-worth of his people depends on being able to live off the land.

"A man who provides for his family has his sense of pride," he said. "His family appreciates the knowledge and skill this requires. To take this away from him-to make him feel he is doing something ugly and unwholesome-destroys him as a father, for there is nothing else he knows how to do.

"He is shamed within himself. And so he doesn't teach his sons the old ways, and the cycle is broken. He and the whole community become depressed. There are generations out there that now are lost, that not only lack the old ways but also the education to market any skills in the world."

Lonsdale said it is time for our fumbling western culture to begin making amends "for what we have done to these people."

As Hickes pointed out, eons of Inuit hunting never had a negative impact on any land or sea animal population. Only the westerners have decimated things. Including the Inuit.